Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Redlines and the Problems of Intervention in Syria

April 30, 2013 | 0900 GMT

Stratfor

By George FriedmanFounder and Chairman
The civil war in Syria, one of the few lasting legacies of the Arab Spring,
has been under way for more than two years. There has been substantial
outside intervention in the war. The Iranians in particular, and the
Russians to a lesser extent, have supported the Alawites under Bashar al
Assad. The Saudis and some of the Gulf States have supported the Sunni insurgents in various ways. The Americans, Europeans and Israelis, however, have for the most part avoided involvement.
Last week the possibility of intervention increased. The Americans
and Europeans have had no appetite for intervention after their
experiences in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. At the same time, they have
not wanted to be in a position where intervention was simply ruled out.
Therefore, they identified a redline that, if crossed, would force them
to reconsider intervention: the use of chemical weapons.
There were two reasons for this particular boundary. The first was
that the United States and European states have a systemic aversion to
the possession and usage of weapons of mass destruction in other
countries. They see this ultimately as a threat to them, particularly if
such weapons are in the hands of non-state users. But there was a more
particular reason in Syria. No one thought that al Assad was reckless
enough to use chemical weapons because they felt that his entire
strategy depended on avoiding U.S. and European intervention, and that
therefore he would never cross the redline. This was comforting to the
Americans and Europeans because it allowed them to appear decisive while
avoiding the risk of having to do anything.
However, in recent weeks, first the United Kingdom and France and
then Israel and the United States asserted that the al Assad regime had
used chemical weapons. No one could point to an incidence of massive
deaths in Syria, and the evidence of usage was vague enough that no one
was required to act immediately.
In Iraq, it turned out there was not a nuclear program or the
clandestine chemical and biological weapons programs that intelligence
had indicated. Had there been, the U.S. invasion might have had more
international support, but it is doubtful it would have had a better
outcome. The United States would have still forced the Sunnis into a
desperate position, the Iranians would have still supported Shiite
militias and the Kurds would have still tried to use the chaos to build an autonomous Kurdish region. The conflict would have still been fought and its final outcome would not have looked very different from how it does now.
What the United States learned in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya is that
it is relatively easy for a conventional force to destroy a government.
It is much harder -- if not impossible -- to use the same force to
impose a new type of government. The government that follows might be in
some moral sense better than what preceded it -- it is difficult to
imagine a more vile regime than Saddam Hussein's -- but the regime that
replaces it will first be called chaos, followed by another regime that
survives to the extent that it holds the United States at arm's length.
Therefore, redline or not, few want to get involved in another
intervention pivoting on weapons of mass destruction.

Interventionist Arguments and Illusions

However, there are those who want to intervene for moral reasons. In
Syria, there is the same moral issue that there was in Iraq. The
existing regime is corrupt and vicious. It should not be forgotten that
the al Assad regime conducted a massacre in the city of Hama in 1982 in
which tens of thousands of Sunnis were killed for opposing the regime.
The regime carried out constant violations of human rights and endless
brutality. There was nothing new in this, and the world was able to act
fairly indifferent to the events, since it was still possible to create
media blackouts in those days. Syria's patron, the Soviet Union,
protected it, and challenging the Syrian regime would be a challenge to
the Soviet Union. It was a fight that few wanted to wage because the
risks were seen as too high.
The situation is different today. Syria's major patron is Iran,
which had (until its reversal in Syria) been moving toward a reshaping
of the balance of power in the region. Thus, from the point of view of
the American right, an intervention is morally required to confront evil
regimes. There are those on the left who also want intervention. In the
1980s, the primary concern of the left was the threat of nuclear war,
and they saw any intervention as destabilizing a precarious balance.
That concern is gone, and advocacy for military intervention to protect
human rights is a significant if not universal theme on the left.
The difference between right-wing and left-wing interventionists is
the illusions they harbor. In spite of experiences in Afghanistan and
Iraq, right-wing interventionists continue to believe that the United
States and Europe have the power not only to depose regimes but also to
pacify the affected countries and create Western-style democracies. The
left believes that there is such a thing as a neutral intervention --
one in which the United States and Europe intervene to end a particular
evil, and with that evil gone, the country will now freely select a
Western-style constitutional democracy. Where the right-wing
interventionists cannot absorb the lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq, the
left-wing interventionists cannot absorb the lessons of Libya.
Everyone loved the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. What was not
to like? The Evil Empire was collapsing for the right; respect for human
rights was universally embraced for the left. But Eastern Europe was
occupied by Josef Stalin in 1945 following domination and occupation by
Adolf Hitler. Eastern Europeans had never truly embraced either, and for
the most part loathed both. The collapse freed them to be what they by
nature were. What was lurking under the surface had always been there,
suppressed but still the native political culture and aspiration.
That is not what was under the surface in Afghanistan or Iraq. These
countries were not Europe and did not want to be. One of the reasons
that Hussein was despised was that he was secular -- that he violated
fundamental norms of Islam both in his personal life and in the way he
governed the country. There were many who benefited from his regime and
supported him, but if you lopped off the regime, what was left was a
Muslim country wanting to return to its political culture, much as
Eastern Europe returned to its.
In Syria, there are two main factions fighting. The al Assad regime is Alawite,
a heterodox offshoot of Shi'ism. But its more important characteristic
is that it is a secular regime, not guided by either liberal democracy
or Islam but with withering roots in secular Arab Socialism. Lop it off
and what is left is not another secular movement, this time liberal and
democratic, but the underlying Muslim forces that had been suppressed
but never eradicated. A New York Times article this week pointed out
that there are no organized secular forces in areas held by the Sunni
insurgents. The religious forces are in control. In Syria, secularism
belonged to the Baath Party and the Alawites, and it was brutal. But get
rid of it, and you do not get liberal democracy.
This is what many observers missed in the Arab Spring. They thought
that under the surface of the oppressive Hosni Mubarak regime, which was
secular and brutal, was a secular liberal democratic force. Such a
force was present in Egypt, more than in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan or
Libya, but still did not represent the clear alternative to Mubarak. The
alternative -- not as clearly as elsewhere, but still the alternative
-- was the Muslim Brotherhood, and no secular alternative was viable without the Egyptian army.

The Difficulties of an Intervention

There are tremendous military challenges to dealing with Syria. Immaculate interventions will not work.
A surgical strike on chemical facilities is a nice idea, but the
intelligence on locations is never perfect, Syria has an air defense
system that cannot be destroyed without substantial civilian casualties,
and blowing up buildings containing chemical weapons could release the
chemicals before they burn. Sending troops deep into Syria would not be a
matter of making a few trips by helicopter. The country is an armed
camp, and destroying or seizing stockpiles of chemical weapons is
complicated and requires manpower. To destroy the stockpiles, you must
first secure ports, airports and roads to get to them, and then you have
to defend the roads, of which there are many.
Eradicating chemical weapons from Syria -- assuming that they are all in al Assad's territory -- would require occupying that territory,
and the precise outlines of that territory change from day to day. It
is also likely, given the dynamism of a civil war, that some chemical
weapons would fall into the hands of the Sunni insurgents. There are no
airstrikes or surgical raids by special operations troops that would
solve the problem. Like Iraq, the United States would have to occupy the
country.
If al Assad and the leadership are removed, his followers -- a
substantial minority -- will continue to resist, much as the Sunnis did
in Iraq. They have gained much from the al Assad regime and, in their
minds, they face disaster if the Sunnis win. The Sunnis have much
brutality to repay. On the Sunni side, there may be a secular liberal
democratic group, but if so it is poorly organized and control is in the
hands of Islamists and other more radical Islamists, some with ties to
al Qaeda. The civil war will continue unless the United States
intervenes on behalf of the Islamists, uses its power to crush the
Alawites and hands power to the Islamists. A variant of this happened in
Iraq when the United States sought to crush the Sunnis but did not want
to give power to the Shia. The result was that everyone turned on the
Americans.
That will be the result of a neutral intervention or an intervention
designed to create a constitutional democracy. Those who intervene will
find themselves trapped between the reality of Syria and the assorted
fantasies that occasionally drive U.S. and European foreign policy. No
great harm will come in any strategic sense. The United States and
Europe have huge populations and enormous wealth. They can, in that
sense, afford such interventions. But the United States cannot afford
continual defeats as a result of intervening in countries of marginal
national interest, where it sets for itself irrational political goals
for the war. In some sense, power has to do with perception, and not
learning from mistakes undermines power.
Many things are beyond the military power of the United States.
Creating constitutional democracies by invasion is one of those things.
There will be those who say intervention is to stop the bloodshed, not
to impose Western values. Others will say intervention that does not
impose Western values is pointless. Both miss the point. You cannot stop
a civil war by adding another faction to the war unless that faction
brings overwhelming power to bear. The United States has a great deal of
power, but not overwhelming power, and overwhelming power's use means
overwhelming casualties. And you cannot transform the political culture
of a country from the outside unless you are prepared to devastate it as
was done with Germany and Japan.
The United States, with its European allies, does not have the force
needed to end Syria's bloodshed. If it tried, it would merely be held
responsible for the bloodshed without achieving any strategic goal.
There are places to go to war, but they should be few and of supreme
importance. The bloodshed in Syria is not more important to the United
States than it is to the Syrians.

RSIS presents the following commentary Malaysia’s GE13: The Hustings Get Rough by Yang Razali Kassim. It is also available online at this link. (To print it, click on this link.). Kindly forward anycomments or feedback to the Editor RSIS Commentaries, atRSISPublication@ntu.edu.sg

No. 081/2013 dated 30 April 2013

Malaysia’s GE13:The Hustings Get Rough

By Yang Razali Kassim

Synopsis

As
campaigning for Malaysia’s general election on 5 May moves into its
final stretch, all signs point to a close outcome. With the outbreak of
sporadic electoral skirmishes, the political landscape continues to
evolve.

Commentary

EXPECTATIONS
THAT Malaysia’s 13th general election on 5 May will be unusually hot -
more so than 2008 - have so far been borne out. A letter from the
Registrar of Societies casting doubt on the legality of the
newly-elected leadership of the Democratic Action Party (DAP) - on the
eve of Nomination Day - set the tone for the hustings: It galvanised
further the three-party opposition alliance Pakatan Rakyat (PR) as an
electoral force; the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) countered by casting
its rival grouping as disparate, disunited and splintering – an image
amplified in the pro-BN mainstream media.

While a record
number of independents distanced themselves from both the BN and PR on
Nomination Day, tensions rose between rival supporters as the campaigns
got underway. The mainstream media reported clashes breaking out in
different places which police described as “alarming”. There have even
been small, mysterious explosions at a BN rally that did little physical
harm but were nevertheless unprecedented, and which police said was the
work of “professionals”.Underlying tensions

The
resort to explosives marked a new threshold in electoral skirmishes,
yet it remains unclear who could be behind them as both sides of the
political divide suggested some sort of conspiracy aimed at discrediting
the other. Even as the dust was being raked up, a senior Customs
official was murdered in cold-blood in the heart of the administrative
capital Putrajaya on 26 April on his way to work. Police said the
daylight killing was not related to the general election; the victim was
known as “Mr Clean” for his tough stance on the underworld. However the
shocking incident took place just a day before a major election rally
in Putrajaya by PAS which is trying to capture the symbolically
significant constituency for the opposition alliance’s push to make
inroads into BN territory and wrest power in this general election.

Both
sides were, however, noticeably uncomfortable as they tried to contain
the underlying tensions even as they deflected mutual political attacks
during the campaigns. BN leader and Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak said
the resort to explosive devices would mar the elections while his deputy
Muhyiddin Yassin said these incidents were out of character with the
country’s political culture. The opposition also condemned the
explosions which they said were “clearly meant to create fear and
provoke disorder”.

The underlying tensions
nothwithstanding, the dominant mood during this campaign period has so
far been one of normalcy and relative peace. People are still going
about their daily lives as usual. Should this hold, the 5 May vote will
go on as scheduled, with the security authorities ready to step in to
maintain order should things get out of hand. Leaders on both sides know
very well that political stability is paramount in a country which has
experienced racial riots and emergency rule in the aftermath of the 1969
general election. In Johor PAS vice-president Salahuddin Ayub said May
13 will not happen again. Najib on the same day equated the “Johor Way”
of moderation and accommodation with BN’s formula for progress.

Irony of underlying tensionsBut
2013 is not 1969. The irony is that the current electoral tensions are
not really between the ethnic groups, although each community still
harbours its own anxieties. Indeed, the electoral fights are largely
over party beliefs and ideologies. The larger narrative emerging is the
relative peace between the major ethnic communities beyond the
BN-defined political template in which power is shared among the major
races through the ruling coalition. This growing inter-ethnic
accommodation beyond BN is giving life to the opposition coalition,
while the space for inter-ethnic accommodation outside the formal
political processes is actually widening rather than narrowing.

This
is the sub-text of the growing cohesion amongst the three opposition
allies in PR comprising Anwar Ibrahim’s Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR), DAP
and PAS. The mainstream media however has been harping on their
inherent ideological differences especially over Islamic law like hudud,
giving the impression of a fundamentally split opposition. During the
campaigns, however, the blurring of the divide continued: Mixed crowds
of Chinese, Malays and Indians have been attending opposition rallies,
reminiscent of 2008; youths from DAP, PKR and PAS cycled around in
threes, carrying each other’s symbols. While these images are part and
parcel of the electoral power play, it also manifested the lowering of
the ethnic and religious barriers outside the BN system.

As
one retired UMNO divisional leader noted privately, what he observed is
the growing sense of ease with each other amongst members of the three
major communities – Malays, Chinese and Indians - who do not support the
government. This, he says, is the positive effect of the emergent
two-coalition system. Outwardly, the BN however appears to be more
cohesive than the opposition; BN campaigns in a singular blue downplayed
the coalition’s reality of having many parties, contrasting sharply
with the PR’s three different flags of green (PAS), blue-red (PKR) and
red-white (DAP).

Will the trend hold?

If
this is the impact of the opposition alliance, the senior UMNO activist
adds, then the birth of a two-coalition system will be good for the
country. Inter-ethnic understanding will be enhanced on a larger
template that is truly national – so long as Malay dominance is not
under threat. When the DAP was told by the ROS that its leadership was
not recognised following a controversial party election though it could
still contest the national polls, the party was quick to say it would
campaign under the PAS and PKR banners which the two allies were equally
swift in accepting. PAS’ spiritual leader Nik Aziz saw this as
significant in terms of breaking down what he calls the wall of
Islamophobia. Indeed both parties spoke of a new era in ties in which
“the DAP rocket has landed on the PAS moon”.

The remaining
days of the campaigns are fraught with unpredictability as both sides
ramp up their rallies. Critical will be the way things go in the
frontline states especially Selangor, Johor, Kedah and Perak in the
peninsula and Sabah and Sarawak in East Malaysia. Surprises also cannot
be ruled out. GE13 is indeed a crucial election to watch.

Prime
Minister Najib expressed increasing confidence of winning back the
two-thirds majority, which he described as critical for political and
economic stability. Meanwhile PR is pulling in more crowd to its
rallies. At opposition ceramahs, such as the one in Selangor this week,
Anwar Ibrahim moved the listeners with the tagline: “Ini Kali lah!” (This is the time!). The mixed crowd of Malays, Chinese and Indians responded: “Ubah!” (Change!). By the evening of 5 May, we will know whether voters will follow him, or Najib.

Yang
Razali Kassim is Senior Fellow with the S. Rajaratnam School of
International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University. He has
been on the ground following the Malaysian hustings.

The following is the presentation by Alexander
Nagorny, now the editor of Zaftra magazine in Moscow, and an expert on
world affairs, at our conference in Frankfurt on April 13-14. I sent you Lyndon
LaRouche's keynote, The Strategic View from the United States, and
Daisuke Kotegawa's presentation, Two Lost Decades for the U.S. and Europe?,
several days ago.

Any questions or comments you may have for Mr. Nagorny
can be sent to me, and I will forward them to him.

ALEXANDER
NAGORNY:

The Chinese
Dimension of the U.S.A.-China-Russia Triangle Today

Alexander
Nagorny, of Russia, is deputy editor of Zavtra weekly newspaper and a
member of the Izborsk Club. He is a historian who has specialized in relations
among China, the United States, and Russia for several decades. He delivered
this speech during the opening panel of the
Schiller Institute conference in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, on April
13.

First of all,
I would like to express my great gratitude to the Schiller Institute, and to
Lyndon LaRouche personally, for organizing such an interesting, large, and
timely conference.

We represent
a new intellectual club formed in Russia approximately six months ago, the
Izborsk Club, which brings together various experts and specialists, with
various ideological outlooks, who are thinking about the future—about what
Lyndon LaRouche has just discussed here in such a profound and interesting
way.

The topic of
my short presentation may be situated as a continuation of the propositions set
forth by Mr. LaRouche. Its title is "The Chinese Dimension of the
USA-China-Russia Triangle Today." I think that this topic should perhaps be
somewhat expanded: The triangle should incorporate also the European Union, or
Europe as such, insofar as these are the players in international relations
which essentially determine the current political situation in the world, and
the prospects for the future that the world and mankind are facing—as Lyndon
LaRouche has just discussed.

The Korean
Crisis

In order not
to give you merely dry, theoretical considerations, I would like to begin my
presentation by describing the dramatic situation taking shape in the world
today, which is being trumpeted in mass media like CNN, ABC, Euronews, and so
forth. Almost everybody is focussed on the Korean situation. Just now, before
leaving the hotel this morning, I was watching the latest news from CNN, which
reported on the special statement made by U.S. Secretary of State Kerry in
Seoul, South Korea. He said that the United States, like the entire world, is
extremely concerned about the nuclear threat from North Korea, and that the USA
is extending its hand for dialogue with North Korea, and cancelling a number of
maneuvers. Then Kerry got to the core of his speech, saying that he was now
going to fly to Beijing, and that it was the Chinese leadership, the Chinese
comrades, who should play the decisive role in settling the current crisis,
which includes the threat of a military conflict with the use of nuclear
weapons.

I think that
this episode expresses the entire situation taking shape within this big
triangle, or quadrilateral, that I'm talking about. What we see here, is that
the United States, as the hegemonic world power and the player in international
relations which has virtually an absolute concentration of military-strategic
power in its hands, and which effectively runs the policy of such international
economic policy organizations as the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO, etc., was
forced to turn to the People's Republic of China—one could say, to fly to
Beijing and kow-tow to the Chinese emperors—and request that they do something,
somehow, to settle the situation between North and South Korea, in order to
prevent Pyongyang from using nuclear weapons and placing the world on the brink
of a nuclear cataclysm.

Herein, in my
view, lies the secret of Chinese diplomacy. If we follow the logic, then
certainly North Korea's high degree of dependence on China, for both energy
supplies (80-85%) and food, not to mention the technology side, has created a
situation in which the United States, although it has both military-political
and ideological power far in excess of China's, is forced to appeal to the
Chinese Emperor and plead with him to do something to help prevent a military
clash.

Now, if we
review the entire situation as it comes together, we see that this Korean crisis
has eclipsed the situation in Iran and the situation in Syria, with everything
being concentrated on this Korean segment. China thus has demonstrated that the
United States has lost face, politically. And this is something very important
in the Asia-Pacific region, where China traditionally, and continuing now today
because of its very high development rates, lays claim to the dominant
position.

Dangerous Return to
Geopolitics

This episode
is a particular case, but it's one which easily allows making broader
generalizations about the world situation. What have we seen, during the past
several years? The world is returning to geopolitics. There is a resurrection of
the lines typical of the traditional geopolitical constructs known to world
politics in the 19th and 20th centuries, which had been on the back burner after
the dismemberment of the Soviet Union, when the socialist bloc lost its place in
international relations. It was in 1991 that the USA gained the ability to take
a completely new approach to world issues. LaRouche talked about this. The USA
would have been able to take the lead in addressing the global problems, which
had been so much discussed in the 1980s. Instead, the USA focussed on
strengthening its egotistical positions.

As a result,
we witnessed an entirely new alignment, especially as we entered the 2000s. This
involved, above all, the astronomical growth of the economic, political, and
military power of the People's Republic of China.

Here I should
say a few words about Russia. Although in 1991-93 Russia came under the
practically total political influence of the United States, under Putin this
situation began to change. Now, Russia has begun to play an increasingly
independent role within these geopolitical constructs.

It is quite
clear that this rebirth of geopolitics is based on egotism on the part of the
players in international relations. Under these conditions, each participant in
these complex geometrical constructs—the triangle or the quadrilateral—is
seeking his own benefit and attempting to achieve it, directly or sometimes
indirectly (as in the case of Syria, where the USA and Europe are essentially
smashing the secular state in order to shape a completely new situation
regarding energy supplies to Europe).

This narrow
egotism characterizes just about every player. This is an obstacle to any
attempts at finding a common approach to solving the global problems Lyndon
LaRouche was talking about. After all, it's difficult to believe that such
diverse players in international affairs as China, Europe, and the USA could be
brought together around a single program. Yet the need for such a single program
is absolutely clear and is hanging over the head of mankind.

Because of
this, we can say with absolute certainty that the rise of this geopolitical
thinking impedes the possibility of finding a common program. If we look at the
countries involved, we can see that, in order to find a common position, the
United States will need to give up its orientation toward maintaining de facto
hegemony in both the military-political and the economic domains. All the
countries in question will need to reconsider those positions and principles
which are based on national egotism, in their relations with their neighbors.
And what LaRouche mentioned is extremely important: to reject the now dominant
theories of monetarism and liberalism in international economic
relations.

Is it
possible to bring about the rejection of these things? It seems to me that this
will be difficult to achieve.

Effects of the 'Asia
Pivot'

Look again at
the situation in the Asia-Pacific region. The United States has announced the
Asia pivot, that they are shifting the center of gravity to the Asia-Pacific
region. What does this mean for Beijing and the Chinese comrades? It means that
they are beginning to sense that the United States, slowly but surely, is
creating a system of restraints and counterweights, which in effect is a system
for the military-political and military-strategic isolation of China.

China views
this situation from the standpoint of the fact that the United States may, at
any moment, cause a cut-off of hydrocarbon fuel and energy supplies to China,
thus strangling the Chinese economy and creating socially unacceptable
conditions for the existence of the Chinese people. From this standpoint,
Beijing naturally has to look for a way out of this situation—some kind of
guarantees. They need to look for a way to break out of the harsh system being
constructed at the present time. This is the motivation for China's seeking
involvement in major economic projects in Central Asia, in countries like
Kazakstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, and the bid by the People's Republic of
China to achieve an abrupt spurt in relations with the Russian
Federation.

It was no
accident that the new Chinese leader Xi Jinping made the Russian Federation the
destination for his first foreign trip. A number of fairly important agreements
were concluded. Even more important is what was discussed behind closed doors,
and what Xi and Putin would have agreed upon. Naturally those talks would have
revolved around how successfully to defend their interests, as much as possible,
in the face of American and European pressures.

Thus, what we
see coming together, perhaps gradually, is new blocs. Without question, the
creation of this new geopolitical system is driven by the inflection points in
the economic and financial crisis, and much will depend on what happens with the
culmination of the second wave of that economic and financial crisis. Very
unpredictable scenarios and alliances are entirely possible. But it is
absolutely clear that if each of the players fails to overcome its national
egotism, then the natural process by which international relations, and these
new blocs, become chaotic, may quite easily not only place the world on the
brink, but actually plunge us into military-political clashes, perhaps starting
at the regional level, and moving to a mega-regional level.

Move Toward
Strategic Cooperation

In this
setting, I believe that our conference has a very important role to play, and
that, to a significant degree, it can demonstrate to the leaders of the major
geostrategic centers, that it is necessary to move in a completely different
direction: not toward construction of this new bloc scheme, but rather toward
strategic cooperation projects, for which each country could contribute the
financial, human, and cultural-ideological resources it possesses.

It seems to
me that this kind of an approach, this kind of new political thinking—I don't
like to use that term because of its association with Gorbachov, and we know how
Gorbachov's experiment ended up in Soviet Russia, but, nonetheless, the need
persists precisely for this—is something which Putin does have a certain sense
of, and he is attempting to find points of tangency with Europe, with the United
States, and, above all, with the People's Republic of China.

I view
Putin's, and Russia's, relations with the European Union with a fair degree of
skepticism, especially after the situation that developed in Cyprus, when
Germany in effect stabbed Putin in the back. I think that he will not forget
this, in shaping his approach to Chancellor Merkel, although outwardly he will
maintain his diplomatic smile. But life has demonstrated that Russia's approach
to relations with Germany will not be what it might have been, had a more
civilized approach been taken.

As for
relations between the United States and Russia, it is also difficult to discern
great positive prospects. The proposal Washington is now making for radical
nuclear strategic and tactical force reductions are essentially unacceptable for
the Russian Federation, insofar as they affect the very foundations of our
security. After the Soviet military machine was shrunk and effectively broken,
our nuclear missile forces are left as the clearest guarantor of the
inviolability of Russia's borders. Therefore, while the situation with
Washington will of course go forward in the form of diplomatic contacts and
smiles, at the same time both sides will be preparing for the worst-case
scenario.

In that
context, the proposals Lyndon LaRouche was talking about could break this ice,
if each of the participants were to adopt an absolutely and fundamentally new
approach to the most important aspects of their statecraft. In this sense, I
repeat that this means giving up American hegemonism, and, for regional powers,
giving up their national egotism. And it means a new approach to how the world
economy is organized.

Monday, April 29, 2013

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North Korea Is Ruthless and Desperate,
But Not Crazy

By Denny Roy, Senior Fellow, East-West Center

Note: This commentary originally appeared in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on April 28, 2013.

North Korea seems to be crazy, threatening to use recently acquired
nuclear weapons against South Korea and the USA. But the Democratic
People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, the official name of North Korea)
government and its young leader Kim Jong-un are not crazy. Rather, the
regime is ruthless and desperate.

Every country has its own peculiar balance between the strength of the
state and the strength of society. In the DPRK, that balance is
immensely lopsided in favor of the state, to a degree rarely, if ever,
seen in human history. It is a true totalitarian state in which the
government controls nearly every aspect of life.

The regime is accountable to no one, either domestically or
internationally. Thus in North Korea we see authoritarianism in its
rawest form. This empowers the regime to harness the entire country to
the goal of regime survival, pursuing unhindered whatever policies the
leaders believe will support that goal. These include tolerating mass
starvation, harshly punishing minor acts that suggest disloyalty to the
regime, consigning up to 200,000 North Koreans to prison labor camps,
and risking the population’s lives through brinksmanship with Seoul and
Washington.

The regime is also desperate, for two reasons. First, it is trapped in a
failing political-economic system. While other formerly “communist”
countries have moved away from excessive centrally planned and
state-owned economies toward unleashing market forces and embracing
globalism, the DPRK government is afraid to join the modern world
through liberalization. Engaging with the world economy and allowing
North Korean society greater access to wealth and information would
quickly expose the facts that the DPRK government has badly mismanaged
the economy for decades, that the Republic of Korea (ROK, or South
Korea) has won the inter-Korean competition by a blowout, and that most
of its propaganda claims are nearly the opposite of reality.

The second reason for Pyongyang’s desperation is insecurity. The DPRK
government fears “absorption” by more populous, wealthier South Korea,
and attack by the United States. North Korea has a numerically large
army, but poor equipment and training compared to South Korean and U.S.
forces. Americans see themselves reacting to DRRK aggressiveness, but
for North Koreans it is the opposite. They apparently believe they need
nuclear weapons to compensate for the vulnerability opened by their weak
economy and backward conventional forces.

With little leverage to extract economic handouts and political
concessions from its adversaries, Pyongyang has learned to rely on
extortion: raising tensions on the Peninsula until the adversaries cave
in and pay up. The DPRK government does not want actual war, which would
inevitably end in its demise. The goal is regime survival, not suicide.

U.S. policy must dissuade Pyongyang from expecting any benefit from bellicose behavior.

Seoul and Washington have declared that future lethal DPRK provocations
will bring military retaliation, not economic rewards. They should stick
to this principle because such provocations could lead to unintended
war and therefore must stop.

Furthermore, U.S. policy should impose a cost on Pyongyang for its
nuclear weapons program. Trade sanctions have not worked, but other
methods are more promising. One is to cut off the access of North Korean
banks to the international financial system, which the United States
has the power to do. A second is to openly discuss the possibility of
the ROK getting its own nuclear weapons to counter the DPRK’s.

At the same time, Seoul and Washington should continually reiterate that
a commitment to de-nuclearize will clear the path to North Korea
getting improved political and economic relations with the regional
democracies, reducing the DPRK’s dependence on China. This is an
alternative and much preferable way out of Pyongyang’s predicament.

Denny Roy is a Senior Fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, specializing in Northeast Asia security issues.

RSIS presents the following commentary LESSONS FROM BOSTON BOMBINGS: Need for Strategic Creativity in Counter-Terrorism by Kumar Ramakrishna. It is also available online at this link. (To print it, click on this link.). Kindly forward anycomments or feedback to the Editor RSIS Commentaries, atRSISPublication@ntu.edu.sg

No. 079/2013 dated 29 April 2013

LESSONS FROM BOSTON BOMBINGS:Need for Strategic Creativity in Counter-Terrorism

By Kumar Ramakrishna

Synopsis

The
recent attacks in Boston offer operational and strategic lessons.
Operationally, there is need for better national and international
information sharing and understanding of early warning indicators of
radicalization. Strategically, the focus of policy responses should be
on stronger families, effective self-monitoring of diasporic communities
from conflict zones, and the rise of Al Qaedaism.

Commentary

As
the dust settles following the twin bombings of the iconic Boston
Marathon two weeks ago in which three people were killed and more than
200 severely injured, it may be apposite to take stock of two
operational and three strategic lessons from a homeland security
perspective.Two Operational Lessons

A
first operational lesson is that anti-terrorist “hardening” measures,
while important, are not enough. In the United States, following 9/11,
hardening measures included the setting up of the Department of Homeland
Security, tough anti-terrorism legislation such as the Patriot Act, and
heavy investment in technical solutions such as CCTV (closed-circuit
television) networks in major cities equipped with facial recognition
technology. In the end, information sharing between security agencies
nationally and internationally was the weak link.

In the Boston
case the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) contacted the FBI twice
in 2011 to convey concerns about the slain bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, but
was informed that the US counterpart had no information about
Tamerlan’s links with foreign extremist groups. It turns out that FSB
communications with the CIA also elicited minimal response. US agencies
apparently held that Chechen terrorism was directed at Moscow rather
than Washington.

Had there had been closer scrutiny by the US
agencies on Tamerlan and his younger brother Dzhokhar, routine
surveillance may potentially have detected weak signals of impending
militancy. Hardening measures are thus not enough. These need to be
complemented with strong, reliable – and responsive - information
sharing between agencies within and across borders.

To be fair to
the US agencies, however, their relative lack of responsiveness to the
FSB’s concerns is understandable. After all, a second operational lesson
of the Boston incident is that greater awareness of the behavioral
indicators of radicalization turning into violent extremism is sorely
needed. Research in this area is currently rather sparse, relative to
work on terrorist de-radicalization for instance. Part of the reason may
well be concern over over-reaction: just because an individual consumes
extremist materials does not mean he is radicalising. However, the
context of such intellectual consumption is important: in this sense the
case of Tamerlan is nothing really new at all.

Tamerlan was a
driven 26-year old who in fact became a regional boxing champion in the
US. He, like many violent Islamists before him, was not religious at
all, but was gripped with profound alienation from his new US homeland
even a decade after arriving from Russia. He admitted that he had not a
single American friend because he did not understand them. Against this
backdrop Tamerlan apparently had his religious-ideological beliefs
constructed by a mysterious Armenian convert to Islam called Misha, with
whom he spent hours discussing religion and global affairs. It was
Misha who evidently introduced Tamerlan to extremist websites that
painted the Americans as the enemies of Chechens and Muslims everywhere,
and deserved to be targeted as well.

Tamerlan’s behavioral
changes arising from his relationship with Misha, and not just his known
six-month visit in 2011 to his hometown mosque in violence-afflicted
Dagestan was striking and should have been better flagged. He gave up
boxing as a haram sport; became not only more obviously religious, but
even judgmental toward others around him that he felt to be not
religious enough; and overtly critical of US foreign policy: all by now
classic behavioral symptoms of the gradual transition to violent
extremism.

Three Strategic LessonsFirst,
the case of 19-year old Dzhokhar’s very close relationship with his
older sibling Tamerlan is instructive, in the context of his parents’
split and geographical separation from his father. We now know that many
terrorists come from families which are too large, or broken, or in
which the father figure is absent, or if present emotionally distant.
Hence younger siblings, for all their apparent intellectual prowess –
Dzhokhar is an accomplished student and seemingly relatively less
socially alienated than his brother – nonetheless grow up emotionally
dependent on available older siblings who are willy-nilly transformed
into surrogate role models.

Likewise the late Bali bomber Amrozi
Nurhasyim, who came from a very large East Javanese family, was ill
adjusted emotionally and dependent for guidance on his revered elder
brother Mukhlas. Strong economically stable families with emotionally
available fathers are hence an important goal of not just social policy,
but arguably national security policy as well.

A second lesson
is the background factor of diasporic conflict countercultures. That the
Tsarnaev brothers were ethnic Chechens is a point of great
significance. Chechnya has been involved in a brutal insurgency with the
Russian government for more than two decades, and the brothers would
have grown up in a relatively radicalized counterculture in which
out-group prejudices and distrust would have been deeply ingrained. Such
countercultural baggage is not necessarily left behind when these
communities relocate overseas.

Thus Tamerlan especially and to a
lesser extent Dhokhar carried around in their psyches the very
ingredients readily available for construction of a violent extremist
mindset. The fact that the brothers learned how to make their pressure
cooker explosives from the Al Qaeda online English magazine Inspire,
together with Dzhokhar’s admission that the American interventions in
Iraq and Afghanistan had been motivations for their actions, plus the
choice of civilian bystanders as targets, is hugely significant. It
suggests that they were in fact Global Jihadists moulded more by the Al
Qaeda worldview in which there are no innocent Western civilians than
any residual ethnic Chechen narrative.

Policy-wise what is needed
is not a witch-hunt on all diasporic communities from global conflict
zones. Rather such communities themselves should perhaps set up
effective self-monitoring mechanisms to detect early warning signals of
impending militancy - especially amongst young males from destabilised
homes.

Finally, the Boston bombings affirm what Thomas Friedman
called the democratisation of finance, technology and information
facilitated by the Internet. Literally anyone can go online and download
bomb-making instructions with readily available materials, as the
Tsarnaev brothers did. Technological trends such as increased Internet
access via cheap smartphones, are converging with global ideological
shifts toward emphasis on grassroots-driven small-cell or lone-wolf
terrorism.

The days of the Al Qaeda organisation are now in the
past. Al Qaedaism – in which the enemy is now a highly contagious and
rapidly self-propagating viral meme jumping from one vulnerable mind to
another – is the new enemy. Now more than ever, strategic creativity in
counter-terrorism is needed.

Kumar
Ramakrishna is Associate Professor and Head of the Centre of Excellence
for National Security at the S. Rajaratnam School of International
Studies, Nanyang Technological University.

(NaturalNews) The Obama Administration has given its blessing to PepsiCo to continue utilizing the services of a company that produces flavor chemicals for the beverage giant using aborted human fetal tissue. LifeSiteNews.com reports that the Obama Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) has decided that PepsiCo's arrangement with San Diego, Cal.-based Senomyx, which produces flavor enhancing chemicals for Pepsi using human embryonic kidney tissue, simply constitutes "ordinary business operations."

The issue began in 2011 when the non-profit group Children of God for Life (CGL) first broke the news about Pepsi's alliance with Senomyx, which led to massive outcry and a worldwide boycott of Pepsi products. At that time, it was revealed that Pepsi had many other options at its disposal to produce flavor chemicals, which is what its competitors do, but had instead chosen to continue using aborted fetal cells -- or as Senomyx deceptively puts it, "isolated human taste receptors" (http://www.naturalnews.com).

A few months later, Pepsi' shareholders filed a resolution petitioning the company to "adopt a corporate policy that recognizes human rights and employs ethical standards which do not involve using the remains of aborted human beings in both private and collaborative research and development agreements." But the Obama Administration shut down this 36-page proposal, deciding instead that Pepsi's used of aborted babies to flavor its beverage products is just business as usual, and not a significant concern.

"We're not talking about what kind of pencils PepsiCo wants to use -- we are talking about exploiting the remains of an aborted child for profit," said Debi Vinnedge, Executive Director of CGL, concerning the SEC decision. "Using human embryonic kidney (HEK-293) to produce flavor enhancers for their beverages is a far cry from routine operations!"

To be clear, the aborted fetal tissue used to make Pepsi's flavor chemicals does not end up in the final product sold to customers, according to reports -- it is used, instead, to evaluate how actual human taste receptors respond to these chemical flavorings. But the fact that Pepsi uses them at all when viable, non-human alternatives are available illustrates the company's blatant disregard for ethical and moral concerns in the matter.

Back in January, Oklahoma Senator Ralph Shortey proposed legislation to ban the production of aborted fetal cell-derived flavor chemicals in his home state. If passed, S.B. 1418 would also reportedly ban the sale of any products that contain flavor chemicals derived from human fetal tissue, which includes Pepsi products as well as products produced by Kraft and Nestle (http://www.naturalnews.com).

Saturday, April 27, 2013

eastwind journals 62
This article reflects the personal views of the author and not of the ministry.___________________________________________ THE ENEMY WITHIN boston bombing aftermath
By Bernie Lopezeastwindreplyctr@gmail.com
After the Boston Bombing Affair, there is a need to do some
deep reflection on what is really happening to our world today, and on
the real causes of terrorism. Reflex reactions are not helping any.
Catching culprits is half a solution.The Boston bombing caused
widespread fear, panic, and anger among Americans nationwide. There was
a frenzy in the media and Internet. When the effect of a bombing on an
entire nation can match the effect of the bomb itself, fear itself
becomes the enemy. And when terrorists evolve from foreigners to
American residents, the enemy is now within.The American homeland
security system has evolved by leaps and bounds since 9/11, growing
tighter and tighter, until it has now become a form of terror in itself,
a victory for the terrorists.CONTINUATION –
When the homeland security system starts to impose x-rays that
could see through passengers, this is the enemy within. When they
believe they have the right to look into personal emails and cellphone
calls of every American to hunt suspected terrorists, when security
attacks privacy without the consent of citizens, this is the enemy
within.
The day after 9/11, every suitcase at every airport had to be
opened and checked. At Kennedy Airport, when flights were finally
restored, the line was three kilometers long. When the life of every
American is disrupted, when he acquires negative feelings of bias,
hatred, panic, and a neurotic fear and suspicion that every incident is a
terrorist plot, that around the corner, a terrorist lurks, this is the
enemy within.
Let us view the vicious circle. Step 1 is a devastating
terrorist act. Step 2 is an over-reaction, a panic alert, a tighter
security system, a long term effort to catch culprits, which is good,
but it does not solve the problem. For example, the assassination of Bin Laden was less of a triumph over terrorism but more of an invitation to terrorism.
Step 3 is a lull and a easing of tension. Step 4 is a new terrorist act
when everyone is asleep months or years after. Step 5 is another
over-reaction, an even tighter security system.The problem is, in this
vicious circle, the terrorist always has the initiative. No matter how
sophisticated a security system is, it just sits there waiting for the
enemy to move. Security becomes essentially reactive. The terrorist can
wait forever, strike anywhere using new creative approaches and
technologies away from new high-tech security measures. When security
grows tighter, it then becomes part of the terror itself. The Ultimate Causes of TerrorismIf you take a helicopter
view, the ultimate causes of terrorism may have been American acts
committed many years ago many miles away. The first step is for
Americans to see the connection. There is a history and a geopolitical
factor in every terrorist act.
An American drone kills five terrorists and 25 innocent
civilians. Sure, they get their target but the collateral damage becomes
the enemy. This catalyzes terrorism not immediately but in the long
term. It exists in the heart not only of the survivors and the relatives
of the victims but also of the entire nation. The US drones today are
in fact ‘radicalizing’ (an anti-terrorism word) not only the entire
Middle East, but loyalists within America. Vengeance is then executed
somewhere in an obscure American city after 5 years. An eye for an eye.
Innocent civilians for innocent civilians. The Allies bombed Berlin
because the Germans bombed London. Beyond other motives, Hiroshima was a
subconscious response to Pearl Harbor.
Few see the connection of ultimate causes, and even if they do,
the terror itself blinds them into fear and anger. Was 9/11 triggered
by the existence of American military presence in the heart of Islam (Dar Ul Islam)
which started two decades ago? Many Americans do not see the
connection. One must think beyond the terror act and catching the
culprits, and have a sense of history. The Guantanamo tortures, the
alliance with nuclear Israel, the clandestine surveillance by stealth
aircraft in Iran, the stealth-sub probes along the China coastline, all
affect not only terrorism, but future wars. They are ‘pre-terrorism
acts’.At the heart of terrorism
is American militarism. The Americans will risk a nuclear confrontation
when the enemy is at their door step, as in the Cuban crisis, the
Kennedy-Kruschev confrontasi. Yet they are doing the same abroad today,
military bases in the Middle East, invasions on the pretext of WMDs,
encirclement of Russia and China. There is no choice but to have a
radical reaction, as Americans had in Cuba. American militarism is
inviting conflict and terror, triggering consequent global arms
escalation, which will someday usher in World War III.The Solution to Terrorism
There are no hard and fast rules, but if the causes to
terrorism span decades and involve events across the entire planet,
mainly American militarism, the first step towards a solution is awareness of ultimate causes, which should dispel bias, hatred, and vengeance. The second step is stopping the vicious circle.
It may involve American initiative and goodwill, hopefully triggering a
positive response from enemies of America. Both Americans and Arabs
have to somehow replace an-eye-for-an-eye with goodwill-for-goodwill.
But this is so hard to do if you are bleeding, or full of anger and
hatred from the memory of a carnage a decade ago. The history of wars
through the millennia proves this human dilemma. eastwindreplyctr@gmail.com____________________ Ministry InspirationalsCOPING WITH CHAOS
In the old days, I would take a fast refreshing jeepney ride in
the evening from Governor Forbes along Dapitan to Quiapo for ten
centavos, arrive at Ma Mon Luk in five minutes, and buy a huge tasty siopao for a peso. Life was simpler and there was always time.
Today, I would take the same ride in the evening for seven
pesos, breathe a lot of carbon monoxide before I arrive in 30 minutes,
if I was lucky, and buy siopao half the size, with more starch than meat
at quadruple the price. It is an economic principle – life degrades
fast as population grows fast.
In the 60s, with a P300 salary, one could hang out with friends
for beer three times a week and have extra money for mundane purchases.
Today, a salary of P20,000 is too small for basic necessities. Life has
become expensive and complex.
We are also victims of chemically mass-produced food. In the
old days, cancer was rare. Today, it kills more per day than in World
War II. Expensive ‘effective’ medicine are discontinued after being
discovered to be cancer-causing ten years after they are released in the
market.
We are all victims of a fast-shrinkng world. Time is getting
cramped. We are so busy yet so bored. Half of our lives is spent on
endless traffic and queues. We may not know it, but we are going into an
uncontrollable tailspin.
There is so much to do and we have no time, yet we really have
done nothing meaningful or substantial. We work twice as hard for half
the money. We wallow in ever-increasing tasks that make us cold
unthinking robots. Globalization and Internet have changed our lives.
Just getting the news from the newspaper or from television, we realize
how much conflict and chaos are percolating everywhere.
In the old days, one could quietly sneak into a church and say a prayer. Today, there is no or little time for prayer.
So how do we cope with chaos in our lives? We need to step back
from the rush and the crowds. Here are some unsolicited prescriptions –THE TEN COMMANDMENTS OF INNER PEACE1start feeling and stop thinking;2create an inner garden where
you can take a retreat from the world and be by yourself, where time is
not important, where you can rest from making money that buys less and
less, where you can stop worrying; where you can enjoy simple beautiful
things like sunsets or music or your grandson;3be more spiritual and less material, find time to pray; the Lord will help you;4be simple, stick to the
basics in terms of material needs; cheaper shoes, cellphones, five
shirts is enough, some have 4 dozens, more than half unused;5be frugal, eat less, more
vegetables and fruits than meat, do not over-eat, don’t overspend, live
within your means, tear your credit cards;6remove yourself from all
communication devices when you are in your inner garden; it takes time
for waves to die down in a swimming pool after the last swimmer has
gone; achieve the wave-less mirror-like pool in your mind; give it time,
it is not instant; it is hard to forget problems even for a while;7find meaning somehow and avoid absurdity or irrelevance;8love and relate to people;
make them a source of joy to cater to, talk to, dialogue with, share
with; make your day by giving to someone;9be gentle to yourself and to
others; get angry less, be more patient, anger clogs your aortic valves;
gentleness unclogs them; laugh at the obnoxious and arrogant, don’t let
them give you ulcers, or should I say, don’t give yourself ulcers
because of them; who are they to make your life miserable;10be humble when people insult
or castigate you, whether you are to blame or not; you will find that it
feels good and refreshing in the end to be humble; when arrogance
becomes a habit, it is a disease, it can even cause cancer.
In all there are just a few magic words –
the three S’s – simplicity, sharing, sensitivity.
This is how to cope with
the ever-increasing chaos the world offers you.fight the chaos from withoutwith the harmony from within
eastwind

In
this Policy Alert, we examine the contrasting reactions of Russia,
China and India to last week's bomb attacks on the Boston Marathon.
Commentaries from these Asian powers reflect the differences in their
attitudes on how to define and respond to problems of terrorism.

RUSSIA

Editorials
expressed mixed views on how the Boston bombings may impact US-Russia
security relations while also using the incident to criticize US actions
and policies against terrorism.

Though
Russia's Federal Security Service and the FBI have promised to focus on
"all aspects of the challenge," intelligence sharing efforts are
"hampered by mistrust, bureaucracy, and self-interest," said Russian intelligence expert Andrei Soldatov.

Duma
Deputy Speaker and Liberal Democratic Party member Vlidimir Zhirinovsky
predicted that the U.S. faces a grim future of repeated attacks. "There
is a clash of civilizations.
The United States bombs the Islamic world, and what can they do in
return? As long as Islamic countries are being bombed, attacks will
occur in London and New York."

Several editorials criticized the U.S. for holding double standards regarding terrorism:

The Nezavisimaya Gazeta
observed that "Western countries and their partners in the Near East
support some terrorists as much as they can, while trying to expose,
bring to account, and sentence others to the longest possible sentences,
and in some cases, even to use the death penalty against them... Until
we stop dividing extremists and terrorists into friends and foes, the war against this evil will be reminiscent of tilting at windmills."

"Anyone that the US backs in their war, in the US agenda, they are considered freedom fighters. Anyone who is against the US is seen as terrorists, or fundamentalists," added the Russia Times.

"Hopefully, Russia's own war on terror...may
now get at least more understanding, less bias and prejudice in the US
and the West as a whole," wrote journalist Sergei Strokan.

CHINA

Besides expressing condolences
to the victims and condemning the perpetrators of the bombing, Chinese
commentary drew attention to differences between China and the US in
defining terrorism, particularly with regard to groups in Xinjiang.
Similar to the Russian view on this, the Chinese criticized the US for
its double standards:

In
the Chinese view, the bombing also underscored a similarity between
China and the US: the need to maintain domestic stability:

"Public security is the basis for social harmony," argued the Global Times. "Expenditure on domestic social stability is something that both the US and China share." However, greater public awareness and vigilance
are necessary to fight terrorism: "While the [Chinese] government is
implementing all kinds of
identification and tracking systems, the public almost invariably links
them to effects on democracy and freedom, and few think about social
security issues."

In
contrast to the Russian and Chinese criticism of double standards, the
Indian press focused mostly on India's own problems with terrorism and
praised America's official and civilian response to the bombings as a
model for India to emulate.

Editorials
in papers from across the political spectrum lamented the way that
Indian government and society have dealt with terrorism.

Even more important than the efficiency of response, however, is the level of "civic trust" across sectors in society, argued The Business Standard.
The editorial commended US law enforcement for withholding any
speculation of the attackers' identity and motives, and praised the
co-operation between the citizenry and police.

Critics
of the US at this moment were rare, with exceptions such as Kamal Mitra
Chenoy of Jawaharlal Nehru University, whose op-ed in The Pioneer said "the inevitable happened" because since 9/11, "the

number of countries and people now hating America could fill up a medium-sized continent."

On the international implications of the bombings, The Hindu called for called for US-Russia cooperationin
the next stage of investigation. "Among the many lessons from Boston is
that international co-operation on fighting terror needs to be taken
more seriously, irrespective of the nature of relations between two
countries."

About Me

ROLAND SAN JUAN was a researcher, management consultant, inventor, a part time radio broadcaster and a publishing director. He died last November 25, 2008 after suffering a stroke. His staff will continue his unfinished work to inform the world of the untold truths. Please read Erick San Juan's articles at: ericksanjuan.blogspot.com This blog is dedicated to the late Max Soliven, a FILIPINO PATRIOT.
DISCLAIMER - We do not own or claim any rights to the articles presented in this blog. They are for information and reference only for whatever it's worth. They are copyrighted to their rightful owners.
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